My writing group recently asked me what I've been up to in the real world and I mentioned my addiction to ED and, naturally, they asked me to write about it so I jotted down the following short story:
Diary Entry: Day 271
They say the memory wipe makes being alone easier for us out here. Since I can’t exactly remember what to compare it to, I wouldn’t know. I do know I signed up for it so I must have thought it was a good idea. I know I would have done everything I could to be the best at what I do, I know that. And it’s not like it wipes everything – just the messy stuff I guess, the stuff they think might prey on you or undermine you in some way. It won’t last forever, though. They say in a couple of years the memories come back and some people can’t take it. They want to go back home or whatever to the near-Sol systems and try and be a grounder again. Just the thought of dirt makes my skin crawl. I’m really comfortable here on the fringe, out in the Way Out. I like the soft black void and the shocking beauty of the stars, especially on a fast approach when one of those tiny diamonds seems to swoop in and fill my canopy view. They’re not all yellow like Sol. I’ve seen every hue of blue and spectral spread of red you could imagine and then some - even a green one and they’re not supposed to exist but I saw it – a tiny jade green companion right next to a large red main star. Some day I’d like to go back for a closer look - some day when I’m not so busy.
Officially, I am a registered private enforcement mandate resolution processor and with over 1700 kills to my credit, I have achieved the rank of Master and the bounty money just recently bought me a magnificent new ship – a Vulture built by Core Dynamics. There are only a handful of ways to make a living out here. Legally, you can ply the trade routes if you can afford a big enough ship and crave boredom or you can try your hand mining the rubble that rings the more beautiful of the planets both of which seem like they might be easier than what I do, except for the pirates – and the pirates are why guys like me are good to have around. I’m a starship bounty hunter and I am really good at what I do.
I have a home of sorts out here – a fairly good sized station I call the gooney bird orbital which circles a dull yellow ice planet in the Chaxiraxi system. Chaxiraxi was named for some ancient goddess of the sun from old earth lore - a good enough reason to pick it, I guess. Chaxi is a beautiful star. Dimmed down by special filters in my ship’s canopy, it looks like boiling amber when I get close to her and I spend a lot of time right there in those glowing arms – near the Navigation Beacon, specifically. You see, all starships entering this system from other systems will first appear – or come out of hyperspace within a few thousand meters of a Navigation Beacon - it’s like a target for the Frame Shift Drives, something to lock onto to keep ships from arriving, say, inside the star, itself. Ship shielding is pretty advanced but the biggest baddest ship would last only a second or two inside of Chaxi’s thermonuclear ribcage.
Both the good and the bad arrive at that beacon orbiting Chaxiraxi – mostly good of course – traders, rich sight seers, miners and occasional royalty arrive at the beacon as if out of nowhere and then motor on out to the many worlds and moons that orbit Chaxi or they re-boot their Frame Shift Drives and jump back out to the next nearest star, just one more leg in a much longer journey. All nicey nicey on a calm day but hidden among the innocents are the unkindly and the treacherous. Pirates, brigands, psychotics and bloodsport thrillseekers whose deeds have marked them as wanted in the eyes of the inhabited worlds. What many of them don’t know is that their ships are not just figuratively marked, they bear an actual data tattoo that shows up in my Kill-Warrant scanner as a red flashing WANTED symbol. With one click I can get a full readout on their status including the reward designation for a clean kill and that’s when I go to work.
Now, I don’t mess with the small bounties. Heck, even I have picked up a 500 credit bounty on my head for accidentally hitting a federation security viper with a stray laser burst in the heat of battle against some monster. Taking down an Elite Level Anaconda can involve getting help from swarms of smaller federation ships and the space around that monster will be thick with friendlies but if you can thread the needle, avoid the locals and be the one pouring on the weaponry when that Bad Boy implodes in a hellfire vacuum snap, then the bounty is yours and an Anaconda can fetch as much as 200,000 credits.
My first starship cost me only 32,000 so you can see why I stay with this. And, I have dreams – the kind of dreams that require a large down payment.
About the dreams…
The bounty hunting is starting to wear on me a little. Oh, I still get a charge out of it, don’t get me wrong. Bearing down on some squirrely miscreant, stripping away their shields with my quad array beam lasers… and then once their hull is laid bare, ripping through it with my multi-cannons until those 1800 rounds a minute reach through to find the engine core… or the life support oxy tanks… or whatever it takes to open up the miscreant to the vacuum of space… it’s just…. I’ve started to have dreams – a dream actually – the same one all the time. Not the good kind. Nothing much really happens in the dream – it’s more a feeling. I’m alone in the vacuum without a ship and I can see Chaxiraxi in the far distance through my helmet visor. She’s about the size of my thumbnail at arm’s length and, as I watch, she seems to be getting smaller but then I realize that she’s actually just getting dimmer… and then I can see why – somewhere, expanding in the space between us is a very faint but thickening nebula of red mist and just before I wake up, I realize its blood and I panic and I wonder whose it is and then I wake up and I know damn well whose it is.
But here’s the thing. I can’t stop yet. I… need more credits. I can’t go back to Sol, I just can’t… and I can’t stop the bad dream so I’ve begun to work on a day dream to counter all that blood. I blame the green star for all this. I can’t stop thinking about it. Not that star, exactly – I know right where it is and could take a cycle off and go look at it again right now if I wanted, but the idea that there may be other green stars and even stranger things further out. There are 400 Billion star systems in this galaxy and we have only reached out to inhabit 19 thousand of them. I’ve heard about a special kind of ship, an older military model that’s being refurbished for use as a general exploration ship – not the nearby hogging the resources kind of exploring the corporations do but some crazy, leave it all behind and just go see what’s out there kind of exploration. I’ve done some calculations and its going to cost about 40 million credits to buy and fully outfit one of those ships for what I have in mind and I so only need another 15 million and I can have my own. I’ll have to trade in my precious Vulture to do it but… and I need to do it soon. I want to be half way across the galaxy before the memory wipe wears off. I want to be deep into the mysteries of the universe when the mystery of my past comes knocking. I never met a machine I didn’t like and I always trust my ship – it’s me I’m not so sure about.
That’s it for this entry. The station comes out of shadow pretty early so – its rack time and then back at it. More about all this later.
Signing off
-the King of Chaxiraxi over and out.
=======END TRANSMISSION============
Diary Entry: Day 271
They say the memory wipe makes being alone easier for us out here. Since I can’t exactly remember what to compare it to, I wouldn’t know. I do know I signed up for it so I must have thought it was a good idea. I know I would have done everything I could to be the best at what I do, I know that. And it’s not like it wipes everything – just the messy stuff I guess, the stuff they think might prey on you or undermine you in some way. It won’t last forever, though. They say in a couple of years the memories come back and some people can’t take it. They want to go back home or whatever to the near-Sol systems and try and be a grounder again. Just the thought of dirt makes my skin crawl. I’m really comfortable here on the fringe, out in the Way Out. I like the soft black void and the shocking beauty of the stars, especially on a fast approach when one of those tiny diamonds seems to swoop in and fill my canopy view. They’re not all yellow like Sol. I’ve seen every hue of blue and spectral spread of red you could imagine and then some - even a green one and they’re not supposed to exist but I saw it – a tiny jade green companion right next to a large red main star. Some day I’d like to go back for a closer look - some day when I’m not so busy.
Officially, I am a registered private enforcement mandate resolution processor and with over 1700 kills to my credit, I have achieved the rank of Master and the bounty money just recently bought me a magnificent new ship – a Vulture built by Core Dynamics. There are only a handful of ways to make a living out here. Legally, you can ply the trade routes if you can afford a big enough ship and crave boredom or you can try your hand mining the rubble that rings the more beautiful of the planets both of which seem like they might be easier than what I do, except for the pirates – and the pirates are why guys like me are good to have around. I’m a starship bounty hunter and I am really good at what I do.
I have a home of sorts out here – a fairly good sized station I call the gooney bird orbital which circles a dull yellow ice planet in the Chaxiraxi system. Chaxiraxi was named for some ancient goddess of the sun from old earth lore - a good enough reason to pick it, I guess. Chaxi is a beautiful star. Dimmed down by special filters in my ship’s canopy, it looks like boiling amber when I get close to her and I spend a lot of time right there in those glowing arms – near the Navigation Beacon, specifically. You see, all starships entering this system from other systems will first appear – or come out of hyperspace within a few thousand meters of a Navigation Beacon - it’s like a target for the Frame Shift Drives, something to lock onto to keep ships from arriving, say, inside the star, itself. Ship shielding is pretty advanced but the biggest baddest ship would last only a second or two inside of Chaxi’s thermonuclear ribcage.
Both the good and the bad arrive at that beacon orbiting Chaxiraxi – mostly good of course – traders, rich sight seers, miners and occasional royalty arrive at the beacon as if out of nowhere and then motor on out to the many worlds and moons that orbit Chaxi or they re-boot their Frame Shift Drives and jump back out to the next nearest star, just one more leg in a much longer journey. All nicey nicey on a calm day but hidden among the innocents are the unkindly and the treacherous. Pirates, brigands, psychotics and bloodsport thrillseekers whose deeds have marked them as wanted in the eyes of the inhabited worlds. What many of them don’t know is that their ships are not just figuratively marked, they bear an actual data tattoo that shows up in my Kill-Warrant scanner as a red flashing WANTED symbol. With one click I can get a full readout on their status including the reward designation for a clean kill and that’s when I go to work.
Now, I don’t mess with the small bounties. Heck, even I have picked up a 500 credit bounty on my head for accidentally hitting a federation security viper with a stray laser burst in the heat of battle against some monster. Taking down an Elite Level Anaconda can involve getting help from swarms of smaller federation ships and the space around that monster will be thick with friendlies but if you can thread the needle, avoid the locals and be the one pouring on the weaponry when that Bad Boy implodes in a hellfire vacuum snap, then the bounty is yours and an Anaconda can fetch as much as 200,000 credits.
My first starship cost me only 32,000 so you can see why I stay with this. And, I have dreams – the kind of dreams that require a large down payment.
About the dreams…
The bounty hunting is starting to wear on me a little. Oh, I still get a charge out of it, don’t get me wrong. Bearing down on some squirrely miscreant, stripping away their shields with my quad array beam lasers… and then once their hull is laid bare, ripping through it with my multi-cannons until those 1800 rounds a minute reach through to find the engine core… or the life support oxy tanks… or whatever it takes to open up the miscreant to the vacuum of space… it’s just…. I’ve started to have dreams – a dream actually – the same one all the time. Not the good kind. Nothing much really happens in the dream – it’s more a feeling. I’m alone in the vacuum without a ship and I can see Chaxiraxi in the far distance through my helmet visor. She’s about the size of my thumbnail at arm’s length and, as I watch, she seems to be getting smaller but then I realize that she’s actually just getting dimmer… and then I can see why – somewhere, expanding in the space between us is a very faint but thickening nebula of red mist and just before I wake up, I realize its blood and I panic and I wonder whose it is and then I wake up and I know damn well whose it is.
But here’s the thing. I can’t stop yet. I… need more credits. I can’t go back to Sol, I just can’t… and I can’t stop the bad dream so I’ve begun to work on a day dream to counter all that blood. I blame the green star for all this. I can’t stop thinking about it. Not that star, exactly – I know right where it is and could take a cycle off and go look at it again right now if I wanted, but the idea that there may be other green stars and even stranger things further out. There are 400 Billion star systems in this galaxy and we have only reached out to inhabit 19 thousand of them. I’ve heard about a special kind of ship, an older military model that’s being refurbished for use as a general exploration ship – not the nearby hogging the resources kind of exploring the corporations do but some crazy, leave it all behind and just go see what’s out there kind of exploration. I’ve done some calculations and its going to cost about 40 million credits to buy and fully outfit one of those ships for what I have in mind and I so only need another 15 million and I can have my own. I’ll have to trade in my precious Vulture to do it but… and I need to do it soon. I want to be half way across the galaxy before the memory wipe wears off. I want to be deep into the mysteries of the universe when the mystery of my past comes knocking. I never met a machine I didn’t like and I always trust my ship – it’s me I’m not so sure about.
That’s it for this entry. The station comes out of shadow pretty early so – its rack time and then back at it. More about all this later.
Signing off
-the King of Chaxiraxi over and out.
=======END TRANSMISSION============
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